Маргарет Олифант
Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3
CHAPTER XIV
The next day after these events occurred the dinner at the Pimpernels. Miss Arden had made no further allusion to it in her brother’s presence. He had said he would stay away if she exacted it, but Clare was much too proud to exact. She stood aside, and let him have his will. She was even so amiable as to fasten a sprig of myrtle in his coat when he came to bid her good night. “That is very sweet of you, as you don’t approve of me,” he said, kissing the white hand that performed this little sisterly office. They were two orphans, alone in the world, and Edgar’s heart expanded over his sister, notwithstanding the many doubts and difficulties which he was aware he had occasioned her.
“Why should I disapprove?” she said. “You are a man; you are not so easily affected as a girl; but only please remember, Edgar, they are not people that it would be nice for you to see much of. They are not like us.”
“Not like you, certainly,” said light-hearted Edgar. “I rather liked to see you, do you know, beside them; you looked like a young queen.”
Clare was pleased, though she did not care to confess it. “It does not require much to make one look like a queen beside that good, fat Mrs. Pimpernel,” she said, with more charity than she had ever before felt towards her recent visitors. “If you are not very late, Edgar, perhaps I shall see you when you come home.”
And she watched him as he drove his dogcart down the avenue with a less anxious mind. “He is not like an Arden,” she said to herself; “but yet one could not but remark him wherever he went. He has so much heart and spirit about him; and I think he is clever. He knows a great deal more than most people, though that does not matter much. But still I think perhaps he would not be so easily carried away after all.”
Edgar, for his part, went away in very good spirits. He liked the rapid sense of motion, the light vehicle, the fine horse, the swiftness which was almost flight. He rather liked making a dive out of the formal world which had absorbed him, into another hemisphere; and he even liked, which would have vexed Clare had she known it, to be alone. He would not suffer himself to think so, for it seemed ungrateful, unbrotherly, unkind; but still a man cannot get over all the habits of his life in three weeks, and it was a pleasure to him to be alone. He seemed to have thrown off the burden of his responsibilities as he swept through the village and along the rural road to the Red House. He expected to be amused, and he was pleased that in his amusement he would be subject to no criticism. Criticism is very uncomfortable, especially when it comes from your nearest and dearest. To feel in your freest moments that an eye is upon you, that your proceedings are subject to lively comment, is always trying. And Edgar had not been used to it. Thanks to the sweetest temper in the world, he took it very well on the whole. But this night he certainly did feel the happier that he was free. The Pimpernels greeted him with a cordiality that was almost overpowering. The father shook both his hands, the mother pounced upon him and introduced him to a dozen people in a moment, and as for poor Alice, she blushed, and smiled, and buttoned her gloves, which was her usual occupation. When the business of the introduction was over Edgar fell back out of the principal place, and took a passing note of the guests. A dozen names had been said to him, but not one had he made out, except that of Lord Newmarch, who was a tall, spare young man in spectacles, with a thin intellectual face. There were two men of Mr Pimpernel’s stamp, with vast white waistcoats, and heads slightly bald—men very well known upon ’Change, and holding the best of reputations in Liverpool—with two wives, who were ample and benign, like the mistress of the house; and there were two or three men in a corner, with Oxford written all over them, curiously looking out through spectacles, or as it were out of mists, at the other part of the company. Lord Newmarch did not attach himself to either of these parties. It was not very long indeed since he had been an Oxford man himself, but he was now a politician, and had emerged from the academical state.
There was one other among the guests who attracted Edgar’s attention, he could not tell why—a tall man about ten years older than himself, with black hair, just touched in some places with grey, and deep-set dark-blue eyes, which shone like a bit of frosty sky out of his dark bearded face. The face was familiar to him, though he felt sure he had never seen this individual man before; and though he kept himself in the background there was an air about him which Edgar recognised by instinct. Among the old merchants and the young Dons—men limited on one hand within a very material universe, and on the other by the still straiter limitations of a purely intellectual sphere—this man looked, what he was, a man of the world. Edgar came to this conclusion instinctively, feeling himself drawn by an interest which was only half sympathy to the only individual in the party who deserved that name. Chance or Mrs. Pimpernel arranged it so that this man was placed at the opposite end of the table at dinner, quite out of Edgar’s reach. Mr. Arden of Arden had to conduct one of the most important ladies present to dinner, and was within reach of Mrs. Pimpernel with Alice on his other hand; but the stranger who interested him was at the foot of the table, being evidently a person of no importance. It was only Edgar’s second English party, and certainly at this moment it was not nearly so pleasant as the dinner at Thorne, with pretty Gussy telling him everything. Mrs. Buxton, who sat between him and Lord Newmarch, was too anxious to attend to her noble neighbour’s conversation to give very much attention to Edgar. Now and then she turned to him indeed, and was very affable; but her subject was still Newmarch, and they were too near to that personage to make the discussion agreeable. “You should hear Lord Newmarch on the education question,” the lady said; “his ideas are so clear, and then they are so charmingly expressed. I consider his style admirable. You don’t know it? How very strange, Mr. Arden! He contributes a good deal to the Edinburgh. I thought of course you must have been acquainted with his works.”
“I never read any of them,” said Edgar; and I trust I never shall, he felt he should have liked to have said; but he only added instead, “I have spent all my time wandering to and fro over the face of the earth, which leaves one in the depths of ignorance of everything one ought to know.”
“Oh, do you think so?” said Mrs. Buxton. “For my part, I think there is nothing like travelling for expanding the mind. Lord Newmarch published a charming book of travels last year—From Turnstall to Teneriffe. Turnstall is one of his family places, you know. It made quite a commotion in the literary world. I do think he is one of the most rising young men of the age.”
“Do you admire Lord Newmarch very much?” Edgar whispered to Alice, who was eating her fish very sedately by his side. Poor Alice grew very red, and gave a little choking cough, and put down her fork, and cleared her throat. She looked as if she had been caught doing something which was very improper, and dropped her fork as if it burned her. And it was a moment before she could speak. “Oh yes, Mr. Arden,” was the reply she made, giving a shy glance at him, and then looking down upon her plate.
“But don’t you think he looks a little too much as if the fate of the country rested on his head?” said Edgar, valiantly trying again. “Tell me, please, is he a bore?”
“Oh no, Mr. Arden!” said Alice, and she looked at her plate again. “Does she want to finish her fish, I wonder?” Edgar asked himself; and then he turned to Mrs. Buxton, to leave his younger companion at liberty. But Mrs. Buxton had tackled Lord Newmarch, and they were discussing the question of compulsory education, with much authoritative condescension on the gentleman’s part, and eager interest on the lady’s. Edgar was not uninterested in such questions, but he had come to the Red House with a light-hearted intention of amusing himself, and he sighed for Gussy Thornleigh and her gossip, or anything that should be pleasant and nonsensical. Alice had returned to her fish, not that she cared for the fish, but because it was the only thing for her to do. If Edgar had but known it, she was quite disposed to go on saying, “Oh yes, Mr. Arden,” and “Oh no, Mr. Arden,” all the time of dinner, without caring in the least for the entrees, or even for the jellies and creams and other dainties with which the banquet wound up. But then he did not know that, and could not but imagine that her fish was what she liked best.
In his despair, however, he caught Mrs. Pimpernel’s eye, who was looking bland but disturbed, saying “There is no doubt of that,” and “Education is very necessary,” and “I am sure I am quite of Lord Newmarch’s opinion,” at intervals. She was amiable, but she was not happy with that wise young nobleman at her right hand, and such an appreciative audience as Mrs. Buxton beside him. Edgar glanced across at her, and caught her look of distress. “I do not care anything about education,” he said, firing a friendly gun, as it were, across her bows. “I hate it when I am at dinner.” And then Mrs. Pimpernel gave him a look which said more than words.
“Oh, fie,” she said, leaning across the corner, “you know you should not say that. Do you think we English are behind in light conversation, Mr. Arden? For more important matters I know we can defy anybody,” and she gave Lord Newmarch an eloquent look, which he returned with a little bow; “but I daresay,” said Mrs. Pimpernel, with that cloud of uneasiness on her brow, “we are behind in chitter-chatter and table-talk.”
“I like chitter-chatter,” said Edgar; “and besides, I want to know who the people are. Who is that pretty girl on Mr. Pimpernel’s left hand? You must recollect I know nobody, and am quite a stranger in my own place.”
“Oh, Mr. Arden, that is Miss Molyneaux, Mrs. Molyneaux’s eldest daughter,” said the gracious hostess, indicating the lady on her left hand, who smiled and coloured, and looked at Edgar with friendly eyes. “She is pretty—such a complexion and teeth! Did you notice her teeth, Mr. Arden? They are like pearls. My Alice has nice teeth, but I always say they are nothing to compare to Mary Molyneaux’s. And that’s Mr. Arden, your namesake, beside her. He is considered a very handsome man.”
“Do you approve of personal gossip, Mr. Arden?” said Mrs. Buxton, breaking in; but Edgar was too much interested to be stopped, even by motives of civility.
“Mr. Arden, my namesake! Then that explains it.” He said these last words, not aloud, but within himself, for now he could see that the face which this man’s face recalled to him was that of his own sister, Clare. It gave him the most curious sensation, moving him almost to anger. A stranger whom he knew nothing of, who was nothing to him, to resemble Clare! It looked like profanity, desecration. After all, there was something evidently in the Arden blood—something entirely wanting to himself—a secret influence—which he, the first of the name, did not share.
“Not only your namesake,” said Lord Newmarch, in his thin voice, much to Mrs. Buxton’s disgust. The young lord was very philosophical, and full to overflowing with questions of political importance, and the progress of the world, and all the knowledge of the nineteenth century; but still he was patrician born, and could not resist a genealogical question. “Not only your namesake. He is old Arthur Arden’s son, who was your father’s first cousin. He is the nearest relative you have except your sister; and, as long as you don’t have sons of your own, he is the next heir.”
“Ah!” said Edgar, as if he had sustained a blow. He could not explain how it was that he received the information thus. Why should he object to Arthur Arden, or be anything but pleased to see the next in the succession—the man who, of all the men in the world, should be most interesting to him? “The same blood runs in our veins,” he tried to say to himself, and gazed down curiously at the end of the table, raising thereby a little pleasurable excitement in the bosom of Mrs. Molyneaux, who sat opposite to him. “He is struck with my Mary,” the mother thought; and Edgar was so good a match that it was no wonder she was moved a little. Fortunately, Mary knew nothing about it, but sat by the other Arden, and chattered as much as Gussy Thornleigh had done, and could not help thinking what a pity it was so handsome a man, and one so like the family, should not be the true heir. “I have been over Arden Hall, and you are so like the portraits,” Mary Molyneaux was saying at that very moment, while Lord Newmarch explained who her companion was to Edgar. “The present Mr. Arden is not a bit like them. I can’t help feeling as if you must be the rightful Squire.”
“I have got only the complexion, and not the lands,” said Mr. Arthur Arden. “It is a poor exchange. And this is the first time I ever saw my cousin. He does not know me from Adam. We are not a very friendly race; but I know Clare.”
“Oh, Miss Arden? Don’t you think she is quite beautiful—but awfully proud?” said the girl. “She will not know the Pimpernels; though all the best people have called on them, she will never call. Don’t you think it is horrid for a girl to be so proud?”
“She has the family spirit,” said her kinsman, with a look which Mary, in her innocence, did not comprehend. The talk at the table at Thorne was more amusing, but perhaps there was a deeper interest in what was then going on at the Red House.
CHAPTER XV
It was impossible for Edgar not to look with interest upon this other Arden, who was so like his family, so like his own sister, with the very same air about him which the portraits had, and in which the young man felt he was himself so strangely wanting. Perhaps if Gussy Thornleigh had been by his side, or even that pretty Miss Molyneaux, who was entertaining his unknown relation, his eyes and thoughts would not have been so persistently drawn that way. But between Alice Pimpernel, who said, “Oh no, Mr. Arden,” and “Oh yes, Mr. Arden,” and Mrs. Buxton, who was collecting the pearls which dropped from the lips of Lord Newmarch, the dinner was not lively to him; and he caught from the other end of the table tones of that voice which somehow sounded familiar, and turns of the head full of that vague family resemblance which goes so far in a race, and which recalled to him not only his sister whom he loved, but his father whom he did not love. How strange it was that he should have been so entirely passed over amid all those family links that bound the others together! It proves, Edgar said to himself, that it is not blood that does it, but only association, education, the impressions made upon the mind at its most susceptible age. He reasoned thus with himself, but did not find the reasoning quite satisfactory, and could not but feel a mingled attraction and repulsion to the stranger who was his nearest relation, his successor if he died, and surely ought to be his friend while he lived. When the ladies left the room, and the others drew closer round the table, he could no longer resist the impulse that moved him. It was true that Clare had expressed anything but friendly feelings for this unknown cousin; but anyhow, were he bad or good, it was Edgar’s duty, as the chief of the family, to know its branches. It did not seem to him even that it was right or natural to ask for any introduction. After a little hesitation he changed his place, and took the chair by Arthur Arden’s side. “They tell me you are of my family,” he said, “and your face makes me sure of it—in which case, I suppose, we are each other’s nearest relations, at least on the Arden side.”
The landless cousin paused for a moment before he replied to the young Squire. He looked him all over with something which might have seemed insolence had Edgar’s nature led him to expect evil. “I suppose, of course, you are my cousin the Squire,” he said, carelessly, “though I certainly should never have made you out to be an Arden by your face.”
“No; I am like my mother they tell me,” said Edgar; but for the first time in his life he reddened at that long understood and acknowledged fact. There was nothing said that insulted him, but there was an inference which he did not understand, which yet penetrated him like a dagger. It was unendurable, though he had no comprehension what it meant.
“I never knew rightly who Mrs. Arden was,” said Arthur; “a foreigner, I believe, or at least a stranger to the county. I don’t think I should like my eldest son to be so unlike me if I were a married man.”
“Mr. Arden, I don’t pretend to understand your meaning; but if you wish to be offensive perhaps our acquaintance had better end at once,” said Edgar, “I have no desire to quarrel with my heir.”
Another pause followed, during which the dark countenance of the other Arden fluctuated for a moment between darkness and light. Then it suddenly brightened all over with that smile for which the Ardens were famous. “Your heir!” he said. “You are half a lifetime younger than I am, and much more likely to be my heir—if I had anything to leave. And I don’t want to be offensive. I am a bitter beggar; I can’t help myself. If you were as poor as I am, and saw a healthy boy cutting you out of everything—land, money, consideration, life–”
“Don’t say so,” cried open-hearted Edgar, forgetting his offence; “on the contrary, if I can do anything to make life more tolerable—more agreeable– I am just as likely to die as any one,” he continued, with a half comic sense that this must be consolatory to his new acquaintance; “and I have my sister to think of, who in that case would want a friend. Why should not we be of mutual use to each other? I now; you perhaps hereafter–”
“By Jove!” cried the other, looking at him keenly. And then he drank off a large glass of claret, as if he required the strength it would give. “You are the strangest fellow I ever met.”
“I don’t think so,” said Edgar, laughing. “Nothing so remarkable; but I hope we shall know each other better before long. There is not much attraction just now in the country, but in September, if you will come to Arden–”
“Do you know Miss Arden can’t bear me?” said his new friend.
“Can’t bear you!” Edgar faltered as he spoke—for as soon as his unwary lips had uttered the invitation he remembered what Clare had said.
“Yes; your sister hates me,” said Arthur Arden. “I cannot tell why, I am sure. I suppose because my father and yours fought like cat and dog—or like near relations if you choose, which answers quite as well. I am not at all sure that he did not send you abroad to be out of our way. He believed us capable of poisoning you—or—any other atrocity,” he added, with a little harsh laugh.
“And are you?” said Edgar, laughing too, though with no great heart.
“I don’t think I shall try,” said his new kinsman. “My father is dead, and one is less courageous than two. By Jove! just think what a difference it would make. Here am I, a poor wretch, living from hand to mouth, not knowing one year where my next year’s living is to come from, or sometimes where my next dinner is to come from, for that matter. If ever one man had an inducement to hate another, you may imagine it is I.”
This grim talk was not amusing to Edgar, as may be supposed; but, as his companion spoke with perfect composure, he received it with equal calm, though not without a secret shudder in his heart. “I think we might arrange better than that,” he said. “We have time to talk it over later; but, in my opinion, the head of a family has duties. It sounds almost impertinent to call myself the head of the family to you, who are older, and probably know much more about it; but–”
“You are so,” said Arthur Arden, “and fact is incapable of impertinence. Talking of the country having no attractions, I should rather like to try a June at Arden. I suppose you bucolics think that the best of the year, don’t you? roses, and all that sort of thing. And I happen to have heaps of invitations for September, and not much appetite for town at the present moment. If it suits you, and your sister Clare does not object too strenuously, I’ll go with you now.”
This sudden and unexpected acceptance of his invitation filled Edgar with dismay. September was a totally different affair. In September there would be various visitors, and one individual whom she disliked need not be oppressive to Clare. But now, while they were alone, and while yet all the novelty of his situation was fresh upon Edgar, nothing, he felt, could be more inappropriate. Arthur Arden swayed himself upon his chair, leaving one arm over the back, with careless ease, while his cousin, suddenly brought to a stand-still, tried to collect himself, and decide what it was best to do. “Ah, I see,” Arthur said, after a pause, still with the same carelessness, “I bore you. You were not prepared for anything so prompt on my part; and Madam Clare–”
“I cannot allow my sister’s name to be mentioned,” cried Edgar angrily, “except with respect.”
“Good heavens, how could I name her with greater respect? If I said Madam Arden, which is the proper traditionary title, you would think I meant your grandmother. I say Madam Clare, because my cousin is the lady of the parish: I will say Queen Clare, if you please: it comes to about the same thing in our family, as I suppose you know.”
“As I suppose you don’t know,” was in this arrogant Arden’s tone; but it was lost upon Edgar, whose mind was busy about the problem how he could manage between Arthur’s necessities and Clare’s dislike. The party was in motion by this time to join the ladies, and Lord Newmarch came up to the two Ardens in the momentary breaking up.
“I want very much to see more of you,” he said, addressing himself to Edgar. “I see you two cousins have made acquaintance, so I need not volunteer my services; but I am very anxious to see more of you. I daresay there are many things in the county and in the country which you will find a little puzzling after living so long abroad; and I hope to get a great deal of information from you about Continental politics. My father is in town, so I cannot ask you to Marchfield, as I should like to do; indeed, I am only off duty for a week on account of this great social assembly in Liverpool. How shall I manage to see a little of you? I go back to Liverpool with the Buxtons to-night.”
“I cannot promise to go to Liverpool,” said Edgar; “but if you could come to us at Arden–”
“That would be the very thing,” said the young politician, “the very thing. I could spare you from the 1st to the 5th. I must be back in town before the 7th for the Irish debate. My father has Irish property, and of course we poor slaves have to come up to the scratch; though, as for justice to Ireland, you know, Arden–”
“I fear I don’t know much about it; shall we join the ladies?” said Edgar, a little confused by finding his hospitality so readily embraced.
“I shall be very happy to give you the benefit of my experience,” said Lord Newmarch; “there are some things on which it is necessary a young landed proprietor should have an opinion of his own. Yes, by all means, let us go upstairs. There is a great deal in the present state of the country that I should be glad to talk to you about. We have become frightfully empirical of late; whether the Government is Whig or whether it is Tory, it seems a condition of existence that it should try experiments upon the people; we are always meddling with one thing or another—state of the representation—education—management of the poor–”
Such were the words that came to Arthur Arden’s ears as his cousin disappeared out of the dining-room under the wing of Lord Newmarch, being preached to all the way. The kinsman, who was a fashionable vagabond, looked after them with a smile which very much resembled a sneer. “Thank heaven, I am nobody,” he said to himself, half aloud. He was the last in the room, and no one cared whether he appeared late or early in Mrs. Pimpernel’s fine drawing-room; no one except, perhaps, one or two young ladies, who thought “poor Mr. Arden” very handsome and agreeable, but knew he was a man who could never be married, and must not even be flirted with overmuch. If he was bitter at such moments, it was not much to be wondered at. He was more mature, and much better able to give an opinion than Edgar, better educated, perhaps a more able man by nature; but Edgar had the family acres, and therefore it was to him that the politician addressed himself, and whom everybody distinguished. Arthur Arden persuaded himself, as he went his way after the others to the drawing-room, that it was almost a good bargain to be quit of Lord Newmarch and his tribe, even at the price of being quit of land and living at the same time; but the attempt was rather a failure. He would have appreciated political power, which Edgar was too ignorant to care for; he would have appreciated money, which Edgar evidently meant to throw away, in his capacity of head of the family, on poor relations and other unnecessary adjuncts. What a strange mistake of Providence it was! “He would have made a capital shopkeeper, or clerk, or something,” the elder Arden said to himself, “whereas I–; but, at all events, we shall see what effect his proceedings will have upon saucy Clare.”
